A few weeks after the Sony PlayStation Network was hacked last fall, cyber- …

Hackers got their hands on a number of unreleased Michael Jackson songs after attacking the Sony Music archive. Sony confirmed the hack to the BBC Monday, though would not detail which or how many of the tracks were taken in the attack.

The hack was discovered some weeks after the attacks on Sony's PlayStation Network in April 2011, though Sony took its time coming clean about it. The unreleased tracks from Michael Jackson were a byproduct of an apparent data grab of more than 50,000 digital files from the Sony Music archive. The company has yet to recover the catalog of unreleased Michael Jackson material, for which it paid $250 million after the singer died in 2009.

A source told the Sunday Times that "Everything Sony purchased from the Michael Jackson estate was compromised." Sony claimed that the hack involved "a degree of sophistication," and it has since implemented a fix.

A Wikipedia article painfully lacking in citations catalogs some of the supposedly unreleased tracks from the artist. The BBC namechecks Freddie Mercury and will.i.am as collaborators on tracks that may have been unreleased and picked up in the attack; other unreleased songs may include two with Whitney Houston backing vocals, one with Justin Timberlake, and another with Stevie Wonder.

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston

Maybe Sony will now start to pay attention to security now that it has started to lose info of value to the company. The other data was not commercially valuable to the company. It is also so funny that it happened to Sony.

You would have thought they would've learned by now. This makes what, the fourth or fifth breech of their systems in like the past year or so?

Quote:

"a degree of sophistication,"

Would that be the same degree of sophistication the hackers used to access their systems last year that involved a years old security hole they never patched even though a patch had been released years prior to their breech? (yes a run on sentence, so sue me).

Would that be the same degree of sophistication the hackers used to access their systems last year that involved a years old security hole they never patched even though a patch had been released years prior to their breech? (yes a run on sentence, so sue me).

not really again, it seems (from this article) that this is from the same time frame as the PS network hack from last year.

"The company has yet to recover the catalog of unreleased Michael Jackson material, for which it paid $250 million after the singer died in 2009."

Why would they need to recover it?

because like physical goods, when a hacker breaks into your steals your digital goods, he takes the only copy with him when he leaves. Therefor, you need to chase him down and recover the original files from the thief.

...wait, that's not how it works at all. I guess I could give them the benefit of the doubt and consider the possibility that the hacker trashed the system when he left to cover his tracks, but I'm leaning towards a fundamental lack of understanding of technology on the part of Sony's music department.

Maybe Sony will now start to pay attention to security now that it has started to lose info of value to the company. The other data was not commercially valuable to the company. It is also so funny that it happened to Sony.

Nah, Sony pays more attention to PS/3 users who want to modify their consoles, which supposedly belong to them since they paid for them, but Sony thinks their security is awesome and no dangerous hacker can get through -

"The company has yet to recover the catalog of unreleased Michael Jackson material, for which it paid $250 million after the singer died in 2009."

Why would they need to recover it?

because like physical goods, when a hacker breaks into your steals your digital goods, he takes the only copy with him when he leaves. Therefor, you need to chase him down and recover the original files from the thief.

...wait, that's not how it works at all. I guess I could give them the benefit of the doubt and consider the possibility that the hacker trashed the system when the left to cover their tracks, but I'm leaning towards a fundamental lack of understanding of technology.

Your sarcastic answer may actually be the correct one in this case. When you're maliciously invading a corporate system why stop at copying? You can also delete their backups and deprive them of the tracks.

Would that be the same degree of sophistication the hackers used to access their systems last year that involved a years old security hole they never patched even though a patch had been released years prior to their breech? (yes a run on sentence, so sue me).

not really again, it seems (from this article) that this is from the same time frame as the PS network hack from last year.

Yeah appears so.

Though I can't stop hearing the fail sound effect in my head every time I read this.

Your sarcastic answer may actually be the correct one in this case. When you're maliciously invading a corporate system why stop at copying? You can also delete their backups and deprive them of the tracks.

Offline/offsite backups. I know we all like to pull the LOLSONY card, but even they can't be so totally inept as to not have that kind of data on tape somewhere.

I won't cry for Sony. Copyright should expire upon artist death in most cases anyway. Just because the content industry has been bribing our legislators in order to indefinitely extend copyright terms, doesn't change the moral calculus in my opinion that favors releasing works of deceased artists into the public domain. It is our culture, not Sony's.

Your sarcastic answer may actually be the correct one in this case. When you're maliciously invading a corporate system why stop at copying? You can also delete their backups and deprive them of the tracks.

Offline/offsite backups. I know we all like to pull the LOLSONY card, but even they can't be so totally inept as to not have that kind of data on tape somewhere.

I don't know. They left a known security hole open even though it has had a patch out for years. Unencrypted passwords, etc. They aren't exactly proving an argument for common sense

"The company has yet to recover the catalog of unreleased Michael Jackson material, for which it paid $250 million after the singer died in 2009."

Why would they need to recover it?

because like physical goods, when a hacker breaks into your steals your digital goods, he takes the only copy with him when he leaves. Therefor, you need to chase him down and recover the original files from the thief.

...wait, that's not how it works at all. I guess I could give them the benefit of the doubt and consider the possibility that the hacker trashed the system when he left to cover his tracks, but I'm leaning towards a fundamental lack of understanding of technology on the part of Sony's music department.

"Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped conjure up the stolen data tapes...

the recovery part should be easy. They just need to wait for a good copy to show up on TPB. Maybe they'll even be smart enough to remove the metadata from the files before they start selling them. although it would be funny to buy a legal copy through itunes, and have the meta say something like "liberated by (clever hacking group name)"

"The company has yet to recover the catalog of unreleased Michael Jackson material, for which it paid $250 million after the singer died in 2009."

Why would they need to recover it?

because like physical goods, when a hacker breaks into your steals your digital goods, he takes the only copy with him when he leaves. Therefor, you need to chase him down and recover the original files from the thief.

...wait, that's not how it works at all. I guess I could give them the benefit of the doubt and consider the possibility that the hacker trashed the system when he left to cover his tracks, but I'm leaning towards a fundamental lack of understanding of technology on the part of Sony's music department.

"Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped conjure up the stolen data tapes...

I bet they didn't even exist. I bet this is an attempt to further the ploy of "$150,000 per infringed work". Instead of suing for sharing a song based off sketchy or non-existent evidence, they're going to sue for imaginary and non-existent songs and see if they can value it even higher!

You'd be amazed how many "previously unreleased" tracks are really nothing more than crappy cassette tape demos and off-the-cuff ideas. That is, of course, until the perfect moment arrives to release them when someone can make a lot of money off them.

Jackson was known to be something of a perfectionist. Chances are that he didn't think they were good enough to release or hadn't yet finished production on them when he passed.